“When concert pianist Vivienne Mourdant's father dies, he leaves to her the care of an adult ward she knew nothing about. The woman is supposedly a patient at Hurstwell Asylum. The woman's portrait is shockingly familiar to Vivienne, so when the asylum claims she was never a patient there, Vivienne is compelled to discover what happened to the figure she remembers from childhood dreams.
The longer she lingers in the deep shadows and forgotten towers at Hurstwell, the fuzzier the line between sanity and madness becomes. She hears music no one else does, receives strange missives with rose petals between the pages, and untangles far more than is safe for her to know. But can she uncover the truth about the mysterious woman she seeks? And is there anyone at Hurstwell she can trust with her suspicions?
Fan-favorite Joanna Davidson Politano casts a delightful spell with this lyrical look into the nature of women's independence and artistic expression during the Victorian era--and now.”
Series: Mentions and features characters from “A Midnight Dance”, review Here!
Spiritual Content- John 1:5 at the beginning; Isaiah 60:1 at the end; A couple Scriptures are remembered & quoted; Many Prayers & Talking to God; Hymns are sung & played; Talks about God, being a light for Him, God fixing us, & apostle Paul; 'H's are not capital when referring to God; Vivienne found comfort in talking to God when she was younger, not thinking of Him as a Father but as an imaginary friend who was with her when she was locked in the larder; Vivienne wonders at one point why would God create these people (patients) and weave madness into their lives (her firm thought of God as being ultimately good slips and wonders if she imagined Him in her childhood, but shakes the thought as she can’t bear the possibility of God not being real); God tells Vivienne to wash someone’s feet; Mentions of God; Mentions of those & events in the Bible (quite a bit about Paul); Mentions of prayers & praying; Mentions of churches, church going, & having a relationship with God; Mentions of hymns; Mentions of a priest’s hole; A few mentions of the Creator & His creation; A few mentions of Bible reading; A couple mentions of clergymen/parishes; A couple mentions of blessings & curses; A mention of a psalmist; A mention of an outspoken vicar’s wife being committed to the asylum because her ideas didn’t align with his; A mention of a funeral mass;
*Note: Many, many mentions of ghosts/specters (including rumors of a ghost at the asylum and things being ghostly); A few mentions of evil; A couple mentions of magic and a magician; A couple mentions of bad luck; A mention of someone describing melancholia as a wave and it “doesn’t matter what you believe about the Almighty or anything else. You can’t climb out.”; A mention of a man seeming otherworldly as if he has one foot on earth and one in Heaven; A mention of a patient having a fit of panic as if “someone tried to pull her soul right out of her body”; A mention of a patient clutching Vivienne’s gown like a demon; A mention of Thornhill thinking that God is blessing his (evil) plan.
Negative Content- Minor cussing including: a ‘hush up’, a ‘shut up’, a ‘thank the stars’, two ‘leave off’s (used as a replacement for shut up/hush up); Set at an asylum and being around patients there (they can be admitted there for a number of reasons like: having delusions, hearing music or voices in their head, a great-grandmother not remembering the names of her children, post-partum depression, stroke victims, people born with epilepsy or mental illnesses, children born deaf or mute, etc.) & the some of the people in charge believing that they can’t be fixed and should be locked up so they don’t harm others; Pain, Being shoved, Being drugged, Being locked up/chained, Being pulled by her hair, Fighting back, Being held underwater, & Having a “spell” (similarly described as a panic attack or seizure, all up to semi-detailed); Seeing patients having seizure-like events, fighting the aids, being yanked and slapped by the aids, their screaming and crying, & overall mistreatment (semi-detailed to detailed); Hearing melancholia described (semi-detailed); Throwing up (barely-above-not-detailed); Possible social drinking (Vivienne has a glass of something at an event—the first glass is not said what is it, the second glass is said to be water); At the beginning, Vivienne has the opinion that those who are mad (insane) is a disease without a cure and are broken in a way no one can fix; Vivienne feels anger towards the laws that say that men own their wives; Vivienne lies to cooperate with the aids; Vivienne is told to write “I’m not a concert pianist” multiple times which starts messing with her sense of reality; Vivienne says that she grieves her father’s death, but is not unhappy about it; Mitchell is grieving the death of a loved one & recalls seeing their body (semi-detailed); Many mentions of patients being yanked and slapped by aids & their screaming, crying, and distress (semi-detailed); Many mentions of Vivienne’s father physical punishments of lashings and her being locked in a larder (and her being scared of the dark now because of this); Mentions of fires, a “mad” man killing people then setting a fire, & deaths (border-line barely-above-not-detailed // semi-detailed); Mentions of barbaric ways people punish others with (referring to an isolation ward where a patient is locked up and/or held underwater for long amounts of time); Mentions of patients that are deemed a “lost cause” and are locked up; Mentions of patients who are said to be violent & near savagery; Mentions of prisons & prisoners; Mentions of wounds, injuries, & pain (up to semi-detailed); Mentions of the deaths of infants/children & a patient being uncontrollable when she learns of her child’s death (including a couple that lost five of their six children, semi-detailed); Mentions of adults smacking children (boxing their ears) & one becoming deaf because of it; Mentions of drugs, being drugged, injections, & a death because of a “bad injection” (barely-above-not-detailed); Mentions of throwing up, vomit, chamber pots, & emptying them (barely-above-not-detailed); Mentions of lies, lying, & liars; Mentions of gossip & rumors; A few mentions of a possible plan to drown those deemed “lost causes” (borderline barely-above-not-detailed // semi-detailed); A few mentions of a possible murder or suicide; A few mentions of a rumor of a skeleton being found at a place; A few mentions of nightmares; A couple mentions of kidnappings; A couple mentions of fights & gunshots; A couple mentions of a man hitting another man; A couple mentions of thieves; A couple mentions of drinking & social drinking; A mention of a missing girl; A mention of a possible scam.
Sexual Content- A fingers-to-lips touch, an almost cheek kiss (barely-above-not-detailed), two semi-detailed kisses, a border-line semi-detailed //detailed kiss, and a detailed kiss (told in both point of views); Wanting to be kissed & kiss (barely-above-not-detailed); Touches, Embraces, Dancing, Hand holding, Nearness, & Flutters (barely-above-not-detailed); Noticing & Smelling (barely-above-not-detailed); Mentions of kisses & kissing; Mentions of married couples kissing; Mentions of the moral dilemma of a doctor being attracted to one of his patients & a teacher attracted to one of his students (ages or age gaps are not brought up expect for the teacher being much older, a man tells the doctor that he’s putting others in boxes and that a woman should be more important to him than rules); A few mentions of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy & the couple getting married; A few mentions of a man leaving his betrothed for another woman; A few mentions of woman being committed into the asylum for either being caught kissing the master’s son or kissed by him (the person sharing this story isn’t sure which); A couple mentions of a couple mothers who were not married and having a baby; A couple mentions of flirting; A couple mentions of jealousy; A mention of a bawdy house; Love, falling in love, & the emotions;
*Note: Mentions of a woman at the asylum having post-partum depression (never exactly said, but described in the same way with also details about the woman’s melancholia); A few mentions of a doctor ordering for a woman to have a surgery that means “she won’t be having no more babies” & an aid not seeing how the woman deserved that; A few mentions of a story (rumors) about a woman who went mad after her baby died; A mention of a baby that didn’t open it’s eyes; A mention of a dress hugging a woman’s curves (in her point of view); A mention of women entering menopause could be committed to an asylum; A mention of a man not wanting to raise another man’s child.
-Vivienne Mourdant
P.O.V. switches between Vivienne (1st), Mitchell (3rd, x7),
Someone else (1st, x1), & Thornhill (3rd, x1)
Set in 1886-1887
384 pages
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Pre Teens-
New Teens-
Early High School Teens-
Older High School Teens-
My personal Rating-
{Minus a full star for those sensitive to asylums, people being treated differently, & mistreatment}
I have very mixed feelings on this novel.
I enjoyed all the faith content (it was well done and I liked the correlations to Paul) and the musical therapy sections were interesting, but it did take about half of the book for me to not feel stressed about things that were happening or were to come.
Like other books by this author, there’s a lot of twists which keeps you on your toes when reading, and there’s also a lot of hints, but those hints are worded in a way that teases you and probably won’t make sense until the reveal of whatever happens. I like that, but at the same time, I feel left out. Because of that, I ended up rereading many different parts to make sure I was understanding what was going on.
I think the hardest part of this story for me was the asylum, it was good to see some kind workers to the patients, but, goodness, I had the hardest time trusting anyone. It’s still a really hard topic to read about, though, and I don’t feel like the back-cover blurb doesn’t give the heads up that Vivienne is in the asylum herself for the large major of the story, which I think should be an important thing to note. In that way, this book was heavier than I was expecting, but thankfully the faith content helped balance it out some.
It was interesting to see characters from “A Midnight Dance”, I wasn’t expecting that at all with this novel due to the gap in time, but even with those parts, it wasn’t necessarily a happy element or even being-happy-to-see-those-characters-again element to me.
All of that said? Hmm, I’m just not sure. Mixed feelings fits well and the biggest factor into my personal rating is that I did not feel happy when I finished this story—yes, it’s a good ending, but I think I was mentally exhausted by the time I got there.
See y’all on Friday with a new review!
*BFCG may (Read the review to see) recommend this book by this author. It does not mean I recommend all the books by this author.
*I received this book for free from the Publisher (Revell) for this honest review.
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